


Play the Role

by Masu_Trout



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: Dehumanization, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Protectiveness, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-12 20:44:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16002959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Being roped into Adam's wild world-saving schemes means a lot of time spent in clandestine meetings.Jim just wishes this particular meeting wasn't likethis.





	Play the Role

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DreadlordTally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreadlordTally/gifts).



Getting clued into a world conspiracy had its downsides. For one, it had done a real number on Jim's ability to trust another human being. For another, it made him feel uncomfortably like he ought to start investing in tin foil hats and paying more attention to Chang's daily rants on password security. And it wasn't exactly the sort of thing you could discuss at the office water cooler.

Which was why, Jim suspected, he was picking up a phone call from Adam at three-thirty in the morning.

(He'd even managed to fall asleep tonight, too. That was a rare thing these days. The loss of even a few hours of quiet stung.)

"Adam," he groaned, "you'd better have a good reason for this."

"I do," Adam said. Not actually a good thing, considering he'd called Jim on the burner. "One of my friends thinks they have some... info on an event coming up."

 _An event_. Which, knowing Adam's mysterious sources, could mean nothing good. The fiasco in Dubai, Marchenko's attempted bombings—those had been _events_.

"We need to talk," Adam continued. "In person. Somewhere outside of the office. Doesn't have to be tonight, but... soon."

Right. The phone lines weren't safe anymore for more than a few minutes at a time, not even with the rotating set of cheap phones he used for talking to Adam about things like this. It was as if, back in London, he'd stepped out of the world he knew and into some bizarre paranoid dream.

Jim thought to his upcoming schedule—a mission briefing that would take six hours if he was lucky, a mountain of paperwork to do, a meeting with Manderley that just _had_ to be in person—and groaned. "If we're going to, it'll have to be tonight. _Now_."

There was silence, and then, "...All right," Adam said. He didn't sound thrilled. "I know a place where we can meet."

"Where?" It would have to be somewhere inconvenient, far from either of their apartments, but Jim could handle a late-night walk. 

Adam told him.

" _Absolutely not_."

No response on the other end of the line. Jim would be concerned, except he knew exactly what Adam was doing—wait him out, force him to put words to his objections so Adam could shoot them all down. Frustrating, and even more frustrating for how effective it was.

"You can't honestly think that's a good idea," Jim said.

"I'm not saying I do. But if you want to meet _now_ , it's what I can make work." He paused a moment, and then added, with uncharacteristic hesitation, "You know how to act there?"

"Yes," Jim sighed. "This is going to be a pain, Adam."

"Sorry," he said, not sounding particularly sorry. "It's the only place I know where no one will blink at a person whispering to an aug at four in the morning."

Right. Of course. Jim focused on the practicals of it, ignored the casual way Adam said _a person_ like he was excluding himself from the category. "All right. Fine. But this had better be important."

"Promise," Adam said, which didn't actually make him feel any better, and then, "half an hour?"

"Forty-five minutes," Jim said, because goddamn if he wasn't going to have a cup of coffee before he threw himself into this mess. He ended the call with a light tap on the screen and then stood there a moment, staring down at the screen, wondering what the hell he'd just agreed to.

It was Adam's fault. Of course it was. No one else pulled him into harebrained schemes so often, or got him to agree to them so easily. 

Jim took a deep, steadying breath. He opened an app on his phone, the one that connected to his coffee maker downstairs—black, extra caf, to be ready in ten minutes—and then he threw open his dresser drawers and started to plan.

He wasn't an undercover specialist by any means. He'd always been more comfortable looking at people down a scope than through the mask of an invented personality. But he knew how to play a role, and he knew just what kind of role Adam was asking him to play tonight.

The Red Queen. A meeting so late at night that it bled over to early morning. Jim was going to be the sort of man who paid to fuck augs, and the sort of man who was rich enough to to pay to fuck Adam specifically.

A shiver ran down Jim's spine. Disgust, of course. 

He pulled out a grey suit, a plain black tee, a checker-patterned polo, and threw them all aside just as quickly. Too out-of-date, too plain, too ostentatious. None of then fit the man he was about to be.

Finally, he settled on black slacks and a black dress shirt with gold-accented buttons down the front. It would match Adam's hands. He had a feeling the sort of man who would go meeting his augmented sugar baby at this time of night was also the sort of man who would coordinate that. 

(He considered that a moment: gold-knuckled fingers fumbling at the buttons, catching the light as they worked their way down...

Jim slammed the door on that line of thought. Absolutely not. He wasn't... he wouldn't... he was Adam's _boss_ , for fuck's sake. Lack of sleep and this bizarre situation were catching up to him, was all.)

Outfit on, he paused a moment to stare himself down in the faint reflection of his bedroom window. He looked...

 _Old_ , his brain offered helpfully. _Tired._

He looked like someone who was about to go out and do his goddamn job, was what he looked like. 

The stairs he took two at a time, cursing the person who'd invented the concept of a suspended staircase all the while. His coffee was piping hot and waiting for him; at least one thing tonight was going his way. He downed about half of it as he opened the door, grateful for the burn, and then he slipped out into the early morning fog.

A taxi would've fit his persona better, but he took the train just to give himself a little bit of extra time. This late at night, the crowds were mostly drunken partiers or overworked businessmen finally getting to head home—Jim didn't blend in, exactly, but he also didn't stand out enough to be worth anyone's attention. 

He slipped out the doors at his stop, up the stairs past a pair of panhandlers and a police officer hassling a man with gunmetal-grey legs, and all-to-soon he was standing at the entrance to the Red Light district. 

The sound hit him like a wall: ten different thumping techno beats spilling out of ten different clubs, each clashing worse than the next. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the scent of booze. Tourists, drunk or worse, mingled in the streets. A Prague police officer in a full EXO-Suit stomped past on a winding patrol, calling out "Clear a path!" in an amplified voice, and then knocking anyone who failed to move quickly enough.

Adam, Miller hated to admit, had been right about one thing: the couples (or trios, or more) around him were as likely to have augmentations as not; naturals here mingled freely with the augmented, and the worst reaction he noticed as he moved towards the Red Queen was the occasional muttered "Clank!" or brief drunken shoving match. It wouldn't be right to say no one cared, but there was a certain easy closeness to the crowds here that no other district had. If he and Adam had so much as said two words to each other at this time of night over on the streets of Cista Ctvrt, they'd have drawn the attention of every busybody in a three block radius.

Didn't mean he had to like it, though. Jim drew a tired hand down his face as he approached the front doors of the Red Queen, staring at its pink neon glow and tacky-looking playing card decor, then (hesitantly, hating his life) stepped inside.

The center of the room was taken up by a stage with a pole and a woman making good use of both. Jim stopped for a moment, caught in horrified fascination—her arms were _clear_ , like glass, all the way down to the metal rods that substituted for bone—and then remembered himself and stepped aside. A man like he was now wouldn't be surprised by anything like that, wouldn't stop and gawk at any of the augmentations on display here no matter how unsettling they might be. 

(God, though, he was glad Adam's arms didn't look a thing like that. The black had been off-putting at first, a stark reminder of his status in Prague, but the more augmentations Jim saw the more he realized he liked Adam's. None of the faux-natural uncanniness of flesh-toned carbon, none of the clumsiness of some of the construction-spec sets he'd seen on people in Golem City; Adam's augs matched the rest of him, elegant and deadly in equal measure.)

A bartender in a leather corset waved him over. Jim moved reluctantly closer, and was rewarded with a knowing smile. 

"Like what you see?" she asked. "She's pretty popular, especially with this crowd, but"—she gave him a once-over—"if you've got the credits, I'm sure she'd be happy to make a more... private appointment."

Well. At least he knew he'd succeeded in looking the part. 

Jim forced back a wince and said instead, "I'm here to meet someone."

"An employee?"

Jim shook his head. 

"An aug?" A moment of hesitation before he nodded. He wasn't sure how much he ought to say—Adam hadn't given him any information about what cover he was using tonight—but _aug_ , at least, was fairly safe to reveal. Not like Adam had much of a chance of hiding that.

The woman gave him an appraising look. Her eyes darted down towards his shirt, the black-and-gold buttons, and then she said, with a barely-restrained sort of glee in her voice, "Are you with Adam?"

Jim closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he wasn't back in his bed, paying for finally being able to get to sleep by having a vivid and completely absurd dream. Pink lights still strobed back and forth and the club's heavy bass still pounded in his ears.

Even here, it seemed, Adam's reputation preceded him. He couldn't say he was surprised.

The woman's smile faded as the silence stretched on, and she said, nervously, "Not that he's been, ah, _here_ , he just comes to the bar sometimes—"

She was trying to protect Adam, Jim realized suddenly. From him. Or, at least, from the Adam's cold, obviously controlling boyfriend. Jim forced back the pit of guilt that settled in his stomach; he hadn't actually _done_ any of the things she was assuming of him right now. God, this was why he hated undercover missions.

"It's fine," Jim said. "I don't care where he goes, I just want to find him."

She nodded, looking relieved. "Try the balcony. Next floor up, stairs are in the back."

He gave her a polite nod as he left, trying to look unapproachable but not too intimidating, unamused but not entirely cruel. This was a world he'd only ever crossed paths with when he sent agents off from the comfort of his secure TF29 office. Black had known how to navigate this place. Adam, apparently, knew how to navigate it too. Jim felt as out-of-his-depth here as a minnow dropped in the ocean.

He dodged a woman carrying a tray and a couple of particularly drunken partiers as he made his way to the second floor. The balcony was more open, at least—he stepped onto it and felt like he could breath again. The harsh, cloying perfume and the thumping bass that permeated the nightclub were halfway bearable out here.

An outer bar took up most of the balcony's back wall; a row of drunks sprouted like mushrooms in a row along its countertop. Beyond that, a few tables, a wire fence—and, leaning against a side wall with his face half-hidden in shadow, Adam.

Jim had expected to be annoyed with him. It was Adam's fault he'd had come out to this hellhole in the first place, after all. But he caught sight of Adam—

 _Fuck no_ , he told himself angrily, _absolutely not_. It was the situation that was getting to him: he was running on far too little sleep, stressed out of his mind, stuck in a place like The Red Queen. That was all.

(It wasn't. It wasn't even a particularly good explanation, really.)

Before he could find a corner to duck around long enough to compose himself, Adam caught sight of him. He jerked his head meaningfully, an obvious signal even with his eyes covered. _Come help me._

Jim swallowed. Took a breath. Walked towards Adam.

"Jim," Adam said the moment he was within earshot. "You look good. I was wondering when you'd show."

His voice wasn't helping matters. It had gone far past his usual raspy growl into something quiet and full of barely-constrained promise. He spoke like Jim wasn't just the only man in the whole room; he was the only man in the whole _city_.

"Yes," Jim said, "well," before forcing himself back into character. "I told you I had some things to take care of first." He raised an eyebrow. "I see you found a way to pass the time, though."

Up close, the drunk could hardly be any older than his early twenties. His clothes were wrinkled and stained in places, but they came from the sort of brands that screamed _money_ with every tacky logo sown in. A student from one of the nearby universities enjoying a weekend out, maybe, or a wealthy son finding new uses for his parents' money. As Jim watched, one of his hands slid along the wall, drifting closer towards Adam.

Adam scowled. "Yeah, apparently I did." He sidestepped, ducked, and artfully managed to slide out of the corner the drunk had been boxing him into without breaking anyone's limbs. "Don't worry about it. He was just leaving."

The drunk glanced back and forth between the two of them, apparently only now realizing that he was being forced out. "Hey," he snapped, his good mood evaporating between one second and the next, "the hell do you think you're butting in on, man? Go find your own, this one's taken."

Jim bristled. "He _isn't_ —" he started, only for Adam to slide between them with a hand pressed against Jim's shoulder in warning.

"He's already got his own." Adam's voice was as cool and unyielding as stone. "So it might be best if you move along."

The drunk barely spared a glance Adam's way. "No one fucking asked you," he spat, still puffing himself up with rage as he tried to stare Jim down. "You," he snarled at Jim, "you always get your fucking toys to talk for you, asshole?"

 _Toys._ The word send a shiver of ice-cold revulsion down Jim's spine. He'd been wondering what the hell all this was supposed to mean; he'd gotten into his share of bar fights back when he was much younger and stupider, and none of them had ever gone remotely like this. He'd thought maybe he was just finally hopelessly out of touch.

But he was looking at it all wrong. This wasn't a fight about who took who home. This was a fight about who got to buy the nicest-looking gadget first. Adam could've been a new model of phone for all it mattered here—just one that (occasionally, inconveniently) liked to pretend like it had emotions of its own.

Some hidden reserve of Jim's self-control, already frayed to its limit, snapped. He ignored Adam's hand holding him back and the quiet looking of warning Adam gave him, stepped forward into the drunk's personal space, and said, as quietly and viciously as he'd ever sounded, fingers curled into white-knuckled fists that _itched_ to find a target, "You need to leave. _Now._ "

The kid glared at Jim, pure hatred burning in his eyes, reached out to take hold of his shirt—

—and there was a sudden flurry of panicked movement on either side of the drunk. Another young man grabbed hold of the kid's left arm, a woman wrapped herself around his right; they spoke over each other in rapid-fire, panicked sentences. 

"We're so sorry," the woman said to Jim.

"He's stupid when he's drunk," the man said, "he didn't mean to touch you, we promise."

Jim blinked, caught-off guard by both their appearance and the sheer, animal fear in their eyes. Asking them who the hell they were wasn't his priority, though. He just scowled at them both, jerked his head towards their friend held tightly between them, and said, "Get him out of here, then."

The two nodded in frantic unison and, without so much as a word between them, began dragging their friend back into the press of the crowd. The drunk struggled a moment, then went lax and loose as one of them whispered something into his ear.

Jim waited until they were well out of sight before finally asking, "What _was_ that?"

"Well," Adam said, quietly amused, "they'll be telling the story of how they rescued their friend from a foreign mob boss for _weeks_."

"Is that what they thought?" 

It made... a certain amount of sense. Or, he realized, once more comparing Adam to the augmented workers down on the club floor below, it made a _lot_ of sense—provided you had an idea of just how much augs like Adam's might cost and what sort of person might be able to afford his company. The conclusion they'd come to wasn't that much of a surprise at all.

When Adam glanced over at him this time, Jim found himself staring into bright green-gold eyes. He'd missed the sound of the lenses retracting over the noise of the club. They were the furthest thing from alone, out under the night sky with a party raging all around them, but the shadowed alcove and the pocket of space separating them from the rest of the patrons left him feeling like it was just the two of them here.

He'd gotten used to Adam's eyes over the past few months. What he wasn't used to was the look in them now: the heat there, the way he stared at Jim like wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch him.

Jim didn't know how he was looking at Adam right now. He had a feeling he wasn't hiding anything, though. He'd never been very good at keeping things from Adam.

(God, he wanted him.)

Adam moved closer. Jim could see every line and pale scar on his face, could see the way his tongue darted out to wet his lips before he said, "You played that well, though. 

"Right," Adam said. The heat in his eyes dimmed—he took a step backwards—and Jim thought, _wait_ and matched him step for step so he was still just as much in Adam's space as before.

For a long stretched-out second, neither of them spoke. Jim's heart was pounding; his fingers itched to reach out and touch Adam's skin or the carbon fiber of his hands. The music and the strobing lights had faded to a dull distraction in the back of his mind.

"There's... private rooms," Adam finally managed, "if you want. Might be safer to discuss things there."

Jim's thoughts stuttered to a halt as he realized what Adam was suggesting. He had to be misinterpreting—but there was no mistaking the way he looked at Jim when he said that. 

(He shouldn't. He knew he shouldn't. He had responsibilities, both as the director of TF29 and as Adam's boss; he was already putting both of them in enough danger just by being a part of Adam's ridiculous schemes. Just because he trusted Adam, just because Adam was one of the _only_ people he trusted—none of that meant anything when it came down to it. You couldn't always just blindly chase what you wanted. Or, rather, who you wanted.)

"Right," Jim said, "I see." And then, taking the possibly the most idiotic risk of his entire life, he added, "That... might be a good idea."

Adam grinned at him, a quick, barely-there quirk of his mouth. He reached out and wrapped his sleek fingers around Jim's.

Hand around his wrist, Adam led him back into the mass of people.


End file.
